IORWERTH ap MADOG
(
fl.
1240?-1268?
),
jurist
,
repeatedly mentioned in various manuscripts of the ‘
Venedotian Code
’ of the
Welsh Laws
, is more specifically designated in one of these as ‘
Iorwerth ap Madog ap Rhahawd
’; this would make him a brother of the
poet
Einion ap Madog
(
fl.
c.
1237
; q.v.
on p. 203) — the identification is accepted by
Sir
John
Lloyd
,
Hist. W.
, 355. This would make him a descendant of the
9th cent.
Cilmin Droed-ddu
, and a cognate of the family which later became known as the
Glyn
s
of
Glynllifon, Caerns.
(qq.v.
on pp. 280-1 and 281-2), and which in later days produced
lawyers
of some note.
Iorwerth
's family connections have been carefully investigated in
N.L.W. Jnl.
(see reference below). Even before his time, the family had been
prominent in law and administration
; for example,
Iorwerth
's grandfather's cousin,
CYFNERTH
(
fl.
c.
1210
), was the
redactor of a law-book
which, although of
North Wales
origin, was
associated in later editions with
South Wales
; and
Iorwerth
's great-uncle,
YSTRWYTH
(
fl.
1204-22
; see
Lloyd
,
Hist. W.
, 622 n. 55, and index) was, in all probability, the
cleric
of that name who acted as
secretary
and
envoy
of
Llywelyn the Great
.
Iorwerth
has always been regarded as the final
redactor
of the ‘
Venedotian Code
,’ the best-arranged and most complete of the Codes; and he was clearly regarded in his day as a
very high legal authority
; but precisely what additions he made to the corpus cannot be exactly determined.
Bibliography:
-
Dafydd Jenkins
, ‘Iorwerth ap Madog,’ in
The National Library of Wales Journal
, viii, 164-70, is the source of practically all of this note.
-
A convenient short account of the various versions and manuscripts of the Laws will be found in
J. E. Lloyd
,
A History of Wales
, 354-6.
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D.,
F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor
